What influence the decorative motives of Egypt and Assyria, imported by the Phoenicians, had upon the early artists of Greece, it is again, as yet, very difficult to say, and we have to glean such scanty information as we can from what exists of archaic Greek art in pre-Phoenician strata, compared with such ancient Phoenician remains as are entirely destitute of any admixture of Greek influence. Such is the surpassing value of these Phoenician shields, the most ancient metal shields yet discovered. They belong to an epoch when the Greek race was in its youth, when the springs of its mind were fresh, when it was most likely to be influenced by external agents, and such objects were the first to introduce the young and aspiring Greek to the rigid, severe, monotonous, mysterious, and impenetrable forms of Egypt, and to the dreamy, lack-life, symbolic and ideal creations of the Assyrians.